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Christ the Redeemer at Rio

Christ the Redeemer is a monumental statue located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the symbol of the city and, beyond that, of the whole
Brazil. It is also a symbol of Christianity among the most important of the World. Christ the Redeemer is also an important tourist destination,
with 600,000 visitors a year.

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Christ the Redeemer

Christ the Redeemer

General point of view of Christ the Redeemer at Rio-de-Janeiro

It was first imagined in 1850 by a Catholic priest, but this project was born in 1920, when a petition of support was initiated for the
construction of a Christian statue. Once the style was chosen, construction began in 1922, and took nine years to be completed. Today,
Christ the Redeemer is one of the seven new wonders of the world, a title recently given
to 7 world monuments to reflect the list of 7 ancient wonders. It is also the most famous monument in Brazil, and its
symbole, such as the Statue of Liberty
is for the United States, the Eiffel Tower for France, or the
Taj Mahal for India.

Today the Christ of Rio, or the Corcovado as it is called more frequently, is a monument very visited, it is
among the most visited monuments of Brazil. To get there you have to go early and buy your tickets in advance on the Internet. The menus below
will give you more explanations on this monument depending on what you want.

The appellations

This statue has an astonishing diversity of name. Formally known as "Christ the Redeemer", in Portuguese "Cristo redendor", it is better known
as "Christ of Rio" or "statue of Rio", proof that in the imagination of the peoples, Rio has only one statue recognizable among all. To speak of
the statue of Rio is to speak of the redeeming Christ, point. Even if the city contains thousands of other statues. Located on Mount
Corcovado, it is naturally called "Christ of the Corcovado", "Statue of the Corcovado" or even "The Corcovado", whereas
this name designates the mountain on which it is, not the statue itself. It's a bit like being called "Montmartre" the Sacré Coeur de Paris!

This website has chosen to use its official name, "Christ the Redeemer", but other names are sometimes used too.

The author of the statue, a permanent dispute

It was made by Heitor da Silva Costa. But this simple phrase masks the real actors of the project, because some attribute the name of Paul Landowski,
a French, to Christ the Redeemer. So who actually built it?

Well it's a bit complicated. In fact, when Brazil launched a competition for the erection of a statue of Christ on Mount Corcovado, it received
several answers. The winner was Heitor da Silva Costa, who had presented the statue of a standing Christ
holding a long cross in one hand and a globe in the other. But his project was unsuccessful, he did not know how to build it or what material to use.
During the years of preparation he had to call on several people to help him, but it is clear that all these people did more than help him: They did
the job. Thus the statue has been completely redesigned, its current form, with arms crossed, and its purified style is by the artist Carlos Oswald.
Then the model was made by Paul Landowski, a Frenchman of Polish origin, master in Fine Arts. He worked on clay but
at real size, making stretches. These pieces of clay were embarked on boats which arrived at Rio, where they were used for the manufacture of mussels.
These molds were used to make real pieces of concrete. But there remained a problem: We had to make the internal structure of the statue, concrete
because it was the material that had been chosen. Not knowing how to calculate it (The use of concrete, in architecture, was recent), da Silva Costa
brought in another Frenchman, Albert Caquot, engineer of his state, and able to mount this internal structure. Finally, it must be known that the face
of Christ the Redeemer was not drawn by Landowski, he made work Gheorghe Leonida, a Romanian sculptor.

The construction of the Christ of Rio was therefore a complex operation that involved a large number of people, but the paternity of the statue is
given to Heitor da Silva Costa or Paul Landowski, depending on which side of the ocean one is ...

A gigantic statue

Yes, gigantic is the word, but not exceptional! And yes, Christ of Rio is a great statue, but it is far from being among the highest in the world.
It measures 38m high, including 8m of base. For example, the Statue of Liberty measures 43m
by itself, and it is perched on an even larger base, 46m high! Poor Christ the Redeemer will be very small if put side by side.

Moreover, the statue of Liberty, if it is one of the largest statues of the World, is rather small in this classification. In Asia, several statues
of Buddha are gigantic. In Ukraine, the "Mother-Fatherland Statue" in Kiev is 62m high, almost double that of Rio! And yet the latter possesses something
that the others do not have, a sort of aura due to the choice of the model represented, as well as to its form. With her arms outstretched as a sign of
redemption, her eyes lowered towards the city, she reveals a serenity that counteracts the statue of Genghis Khan in Ulan Bator (Mongolia), for example.
Only the statues of Buddhas in the Asian countries possess this capacity for meditation, but since they are far from our modes of thought, they impress
us less.

A strategic location

The choice of the location of the statue of Rio is not insignificant of course. The goal sought by the Brazilian State, sponsored and promoted by the
Catholic Church, was that this new statue be visible to as many Cariocas as possible. It was then necessary that it should be at the top of one of the
numerous hills surrounding the city, and the Corcovado was chosen after hesitation with the Sugar Loaf. This choice was dictated simply by the height of
the mountain: 710m high, it was greater than its rival. Moreover, the face that appears of the city is abrupt, it is a cliff, it reinforces the impression
of height, and it is in the axis of the sunset, which makes it solar at night. It is for all these reasons that the Corcovado
was chosen to welcome the Statue.

One of the Seven Wonders of the World!

The list of the seven wonders of the world has been known since antiquity, but few can
list their memory. On the other hand, that of the Seven New Wonders
of the World is easier to remember. And among her, Christ the Redeemer of Rio holds the 3rd place.

The 7 Wonders of the Modern World were nominated following a vote organized by the New Seven Wonders Foundation, a foundation created by Swiss businessman
Bernard Weber linked to a private marketing company. It is therefore a private initiative with a mercantile goal which has absolutely nothing to do with Unesco,
although it is often credited with the project, but any will to increase the cultural knowledge of the world is favorable, we will not sulk our pleasure. The
criteria chosen for the final choice were the aesthetics of course, but also the complexity of implementation in the historical context, that is, the fact
that the architects of the time were able to build it despite the limited opportunity they had to do so. Another criterion was the historical interest of
the monument. All technical exploits carried out for aesthetic or cultic purposes, such as skyscrapers or hydraulic dams, too recent monuments (the limit
was fixed at the year 2000, the latest), were rejected as well as the monuments in a state of disrepair too advanced. Of the 177 files presented, only 21
were retained, for 7 winners. One out of three therefore. The results were promulgated on 7 July 2007 in Lisbon.

Copyright 2013 - 2019 - Any reproduction prohibited without the authorization of the author. This
website is a private, unofficial site resulting from the compilation work of the works of different authors. Unless otherwise stated, the
pictures are free of rights. To distinguish free illustrations from others, see:
Documentary sources. Other Internet sites of the same author in
other fields: Marguerite Duras, Les Pyrénées Catalanes.
Author of the website : See credits.